In "Lucinda Matlock,"" Edgar Lee Masters demonstrates the literary devices of the realism and frontier era. Edgar Lee Masters wrote during the realism period, his writing being greatly affected by his life. Masters wrote in a free verse style using the devices of irony, simplicity, morals and values, and symbols. .
Masters was born in 1868, in Garnett, Kansas. He later died in 1950. During his life, Masters had moved several times, some of which impacted his writing later in his life. Master studied law with his father, although before beginning a practice Masters worked as a bill collector. He later started a practice always writing literary works on the side under pseudonyms. His first pieces of poetry were published in magazines and his first book was published in 1898. Masters paternal grandmother had a great influence on his poem "Lucinda Matlock."" Carl Sandburg stated, "Once in a while a man comes along who writes a book that has his own heart-beats in it. The people whose faces look out from the pages of the book are the people of life itself, each trait of them as plain or as mysterious as in the old home valley where the writer came from."" (285).
Masters used irony in the poem when he described the life of Lucinda Matlock in a humorous way. Stating that she had raised twelve children and later specifying that eight of them had passed away. He creates a happy mood when he talks about her meeting her husband and then later makes the reader aware of the simplicity and reality of her life. .
He demonstrated the simplicity of people's lives adding a moral to his work. In the poem he demonstrated the simplicity of Lucinda Matlock's life when she talked about how her life was mostly cooking, cleaning, and sewing. Although her life may have been simple it was indicative of the frontier lifestyle and she expressed her satisfaction with her life. The moral and theme that Masters put to this piece of work was that even though peoples lives may have been simple they were always content with them.